gratitude makes what you have more than enough

Category Archives: anniversary

As you know, I’ve been trying to keep my computer/online time to a minimum for several months. Today is Rick’s and my 17th anniversary, so I’ve chosen to repeat last year’s anniversary post with a few pertinent changes.

Today marks 17 years since Rick and I were married in a covenant ceremony. Like all married couples, we have had our ups and downs, but through it all one thing never wavers: the love God instilled in us for each other. He brought us together and only through Him are we complete. You can read the story of ourmeeting and courtship here.

This collage shows only a few of the memories we’ve shared over the years. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are ever thankful for each other. Even though my activities these days are dependent on how I feel and how often I can get out to do things with Rick, we still have a strong love and that certain peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). As long as we continue to look to Jesus as the head of our marriage and our eternal Hope, He continues to bless us beyond anything we can imagine!

To my beloved Rick, the other half of my orange: I love you so much! Your continuous and undeniable love for me are truly God’s gift to someone who has always had some trouble thinking of herself as lovable.

Today marks 16 years since Rick and I were married in a covenant ceremony. Like all married couples, we have had our ups and downs, but through it all one thing never wavers: the love God instilled in us for each other. He brought us together and only through Him are we complete. You can read the story of ourmeeting and courtship here.

This collage shows only a few of the memories we’ve shared over the years. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are ever thankful for each other. Even though my activities these days are dependent on how I feel and how often I can get out to do things with Rick, we still have a strong love and that certain peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). As long as we continue to look to Jesus as the head of our marriage and our eternal Hope, He continues to bless us beyond anything we can imagine!

To my beloved Rick, the other half of my orange: I love you so much! Your continuous and undeniable love for me are truly God’s gift to someone who has always had some trouble thinking of herself as lovable.

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine… —Song of Solomon 6:3

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Yes, believe it or not, this is the third anniversary of my blog. Three years ago today I started out with the idea of sharing my faith, realizing that I was just one of the many bloggers out there doing so, yet I felt compelled to start this journey of trust.

Therefore I truthfully must give all the credit and glory to my mighty God for helping me do any of this because as I’ve shared before, I have too many days when I am not capable of doing much and need to carefully use my precious time. This is why I have to republish old posts every so often.

I am also thankful for many of you who have become such good friends with me through this blog. I believe that these are divine friendships that only God can orchestrate and I am thankful for each of you in my life..

I don’t know what God has in mind for the future of this blog but I do know that He is the owner and His Holy Spirit guides and leads me in what to write and how to write it.

Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel
and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery
which has been kept secret for long ages past,
but now is manifested,
and by the Scriptures of the prophets,
according to the commandment of the eternal God,
has been made known to all the nations,
leading to obedience of faith;
to the only wise God,
through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.
—Romans 16:25-27

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I can believe 15 years have passed since Rick and I promised our lives to each other in a covenant marriage ceremony. To me, it feels like yesterday. In the photo above, my son Alan is on my right; my daughter Kathy is on Rick’s left.

So much has happened in these 15 years. As most marriages, we have had our highs and are thankful for all God’s blessings in our marriage and in our lives.

Because of the shadow of chronic illness over us, we have also experienced enough lows to last a lifetime. But we have always tried to remember that God is at the head of our marriage. And as long as that is true—and it definitely is!— we know without a shadow of doubt that He will continue to guide us as we keep looking to Him for His will in everything we do.

If there is one lesson I can share with you about holding tight to your marriage vows, it is this: be kind to each other!To me this involves:

thanking each other for everything, even the little things

cutting the other person some slack at times because all of us have our “moments”

forgiving each other for those “moments”

keeping your love for each other alive

I know there are more but this is all my mind could come up with right now.

To Rick, my Beloved:

You are such a huge blessing to me! I thank God every single day for the blessing and gift of you in my life. Here’s to the next 15 years… and beyond!

Ephesians 5:21-33:

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—

30 for we are members of his body.

31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

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Fourteen years ago today Rick and I were married in a covenant ceremony. A lot has happened since then. We’ve had our ups and downs just like everyone else and have had our share of tussles. But we have learned that when we keep our focus on God, we are able to see past our own viewpoint and concentrate on what the other is saying. We always learn something new in the process.

The next best thing we have learned is this: to thank each other for everything… and I mean everything…from the smallest gesture to the grandest. Examples? Rick often asks me if he can help with the dishes. I typically turn him down and say, “I’m doing okay, but thank you for offering.” Rick has a bad back and it is often very painful for him to bend over to pick up something he has dropped. If I’m close enough to him, I pick up whatever he dropped, and he always thanks me.

I know, silly little things that really should require no statement at all, let alone a “thank you.” But here’s the thing: all those little thank-yous make us more aware of each other and draw us closer together.

This photo of us walking the beach at Rocky Point illustrates the essence of our relationship. We love to hold hands! We hold hands when we walk together, when we’re riding in our truck, when we pray together…and the list goes on.

Marriage is not easy, but then no close relationship between humans is easy because of the egos involved. We all want what we want when we want it, don’t we?

It is often hard to remember but worth the effort to treat our spouse better than we treat anyone else in our life. Oftentimes we tend to do the opposite because our spouse is the one with whom we are the most relaxed. It is so easy to snipe at or take a frustration out on our other half. But isn’t it so much sweeter to see a smile on that loved one’s face rather than a frown?

Happy Anniversary to my Rick. I love being the other half of your orange!

One year ago today I started This Thing Called Life. I have had web sites and blogs before but apparently this one is what the Lord had in mind for me all along. You know how it is. Sometimes it takes awhile until we “get it.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about my tag line: while you’re here you might as well dance. My two bum knees have kept me from dancing for a long, long time so I’m not sure why I decided on that particular phrase. So I’ll be rethinking that in the coming year. I also want to work up the perfect mission statement for this blog and for me personally.

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Thank you so much for spending time with me as I share my heart with all of you. It’s been a huge privilege and blessing for me and I look forward to seeing what the Lord has planned for me here during the next year!

This is the verse that God gave Rick and me when we were praying about moving from California. Today we’re celebrating eight years in our home in northern Arizona. The story behind our move is an amazing testament to God’s leading in our lives.

The year was 2002 and we were living in central California when we got serious about moving. We analyzed our budget and then realized it wasn’t the right time. We still had a small mortgage to finish paying off and wanted to pay cash for our next home. So we agreed to wait and pray about it, separately and together.

The plan was that if one of us felt God telling us it was time to move, we would let the other know.

Fast forward two years. One day as we were driving home from church, I turned to Rick and told him I had been feeling as if it was time for us to move. Rick’s astonishment made me laugh as he replied, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

Now, understand that Rick and I had not been idle during the two years we prayed about this move. After deciding that we wanted a place with cooler summertime temps but not a lot of winter snow, we visited several areas in New Mexico and Arizona. As we checked out each location, we prayed for God’s will. Where did He want us to move?

Once we felt that we were supposed to relocate to northern Arizona, we continued to pray as we began to look at different towns to see where we could comfortably afford to live. We found a wonderful real estate agent who took us to several properties in our price range so we could get a feel for the cost of living there. We told her we weren’t ready to move yet, so once we were home again, she sent us emails with new properties we could afford.

Within the next year, two things happened that showed us it was the right time to move: we were able to finish paying off our mortgage, and the housing market situation changed to our advantage. We immediately put our house for sale and contacted our real estate agent in Arizona to tell her we were ready to choose a new home.

During this time, we made a point of letting both of our real estate agents know of our firm belief that God was orchestrating this whole move.

The first offer on our house fell through very quickly and our local agent (who also happened to be our next-door neighbor) was devastated as she delivered the news to us with tears in her eyes. We assured her that it was not her fault, and that God was still in control and would lead just the right buyer to us.

On the second offer, we had just finished signing the agreement to accept the offer when our agent received a call from the buyers to say they had to pull out of the deal. There had been an accident in front of their house that morning and someone had driven right into their living room. They had no choice but to back out.

Once again we assured our agent that we were not concerned because God would bring the right buyer to us soon. Our agent was almost confused at our calmness over this whole thing.

Throughout this, we had also made another trip to pick out a home in Arizona. We found exactly the right one for us and began the extensive purchase process with a decent down payment. Each time we lost an offer on our California house, we let our Arizona agent know. To say she was worried would be to state the obvious: she did not want to lose our business!

The third offer—of more than our asking price—amazed us even though we were completely trusting that God had wonderful plans for us as promised in Jeremiah 29:11—the verse He gave us. This offer not only overwhelmed us but caused our agent to be awestruck. All we could say was that we knew God had great plans for us!

I love how God uses us for His glory! He used this situation as an encouragement not only for us but for both of our real estate agents. Rick and I don’t know how this impacted their lives, but we believe that He somehow used our faith and trust in Him to speak to these two people.

By the way, we do get snow here in the winter but it generally stays on the ground for only a day or two. I grew up in snow country (the Northeast), so I do appreciate the serene beauty of snow but love that it doesn’t stay around here for long!

Here are some photos of our home and the high desert area where we live:

Our Arizona home

Yes, the sky is that blue most of the year. During monsoon season (which is happening right now) we still wake up almost every day to this gorgeous blue sky but by mid-morning the storm clouds start to roll in.

San Francisco Peaks

I found this photo of the San Francisco Peaks to the northeast of us online. It is a good—but closer representation—of what we can see from our back patio.

I can’t end this story without sharing something very special that happened right after we made the down payment on our new Arizona home and then found out that the second offer on our California home fell through. One of my writer friends (who is now home with the Lord) asked me to read Isaiah 40:31 again with this precious insight in mind:

~Waiting~

Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. —Isaiah 40:31

The root word for wait in Hebrew means to twist, to stretch. The original meaning was twisting and stretching fiber to make a strong rope. The idea in the Hebrew language is that waiting strengthens us by this twisting and stretching process, and that waiting is never considered a passive posture.

As the Lord loves to do, He used my writer friend to speak clearly to Rick and me with words of encouragement. That’s just the kind of awesome and amazing God He is!

Beloved, if you’re in the middle of what seems like an unending waiting period, be assured that God is indeed at work even if you don’t feel that He is. Maybe God is working out the details of the situation or honing some of the rough edges in your life as you learn to trust Him more every day.

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Who am I?

I'm a lover and follower of Jesus Christ and live in northern Arizona with my husband, Rick. I am happy to say that Rick and I are at the bottom corners of a triangle where Jesus sits at the top corner.

Contributing Writer: Patricia Knight

Patricia Knight is the author of REJOICE! and PURE JOY, two books filled with joyful devotionals. She maintains a ministry of handwritten encouraging notes for those who are hurting, and is also an avid gardener.